Drug References Found on Walls of Ancient Egyptian School

The teacher's text (shown here) was written very carefully and was apparently a model for composition. At the time it was written Egypt was part of the Roman Empire and Greek was widely spoken.

Paola Davoli CC Attibution 2.5 Generic

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PyramidsHiddeninSatelliteImages?:Photos

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Are these formations in the Egyptian desert long lost pyramids? Or are they just naturally occurring pyramidal rock outcrops?
The structures were spotted last year by amateur satellite archaeologist Angela Micol. She used Google Earth 5,000 miles away in North Carolina.

Mohamed Aly Soliman/Rossella Lorenzi

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Located about 90 miles apart, the two possible pyramid complexes appeared on aerial imagery as an unusual groupings of mounds with intriguing orientations.
One site near the Fayum oasis revealed a four-sided, truncated mound approximately 150 feet wide and three smaller mounds in a diagonal alignment (left).
The other site, just 12 miles from the city of Abu Sidhum along the Nile, featured two large and two small mounds (right).

Micol was then contacted by an Egyptian couple -- collectors who claimed to have important historical references for both sites.
According to Medhat Kamal El-Kady, former ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, and his wife Haidy Farouk Abdel-Hamid, a lawyer, former counselor at the Egyptian presidency and adviser of border issues and international issues of sovereignty, more than 34 maps and 12 old documents in their collection would support the existence of the lost pyramids.

Medhat Kamal El-Kady and Haidy Farouk Abdel-Hamid

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For the site near the Fayum, they cited three maps in particular, dating from 1753 to the late 1880s.
The documents would point to the existence of two buried pyramids (within the red square) which add to the known Fayum pyramids of Lahoun and Hawara.

While the site in the Fayum has not been investigated yet, a preliminary on-the-ground expedition has already occurred at the site near Abu Sidhum.
According to Micol, it provided intriguing data to compare with El-Kady and Farouk’s maps and documents.

Mohamed Aly Soliman/Rossella Lorenzi

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Suspecting the mounds were ancient in origin, locals tried to dig into one of the two smaller mounds.

Mohamed Aly Soliman/Rossella Lorenzi

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The excavation failed due to striking very hard stone that Aly and Micol believe may be granite.

Mohamed Aly Soliman/Rossella Lorenzi

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Aly Soliman believes the big mounds are hiding pyramids as the metal detector used over them signaled metal and showed an underground tunnel heading north.

Mohamed Aly Soliman/Rossella Lorenzi

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Apart from the two larger and smaller mounds, the expedition team believes the site features a temple or habitation and a row of what may be mastaba tombs adjacent to the mounds. They are shown in the red rectangle thanks to a false color imaging technique developed by Micol.

Angela Micol/Rossella Lorenzi

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“My goal is to go to Egypt with a team of U.S. scientists and videographers to prove if these sites are lost pyramid complexes,” Micol said.

Archaeologists working in the western desert of Egypt have discovered a school dating back about 1,700 years that contains ancient Greek writings on its walls, including a text about ancient drug use that references Homer's "The Odyssey."

The school — which contains benches that students could sit on to read, or stand on and write on the walls — dates back to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, and Greek was widely spoken.

We look at some of the most amazing pyramids from South America to Egypt.

The house and school are located in the ancient town of Trimithis (modern-day Amheida), which is in the Dakhla Oasis, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) west of the Nile River. The house, and some of the art, was first discovered in 1979. In 2001, a new exploration project at Amheida, now sponsored primarily by New York University, led to the discovery of the school, its Greek writings and more art scenes from the house.

A unique discovery

In the ancient world, schools were often part of other places — like private residences, city halls or temples — and, as such, are very difficult for archaeologists to identify, Raffaella Cribiore, a professor at New York University, wrote in the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (a journal that publishes ancient texts).

Although archaeologists know of another ancient school in Egypt — a university in Alexandria — the school at Amheida is unique because it was found with texts on its walls, Cribiore said. The texts are "further proof that teaching and learning took place there, and confirm that they belong to the only building so far discovered from antiquity that was certainly a school and showed educational activities," Cribiore wrote.

For instance, The text referring to "The Odyssey" tells a legendary story of ancient drug use: Helen of Troy, for whom the Trojan War had been fought, gives her guests a drug (possibly opium) that "takes away grief and anger, and brings forgetfulness of every ill," the text reads. "Whoever should drink this down when it is mixed in the bowl would not let fall a tear down his cheek in the course of that day at least. Imitate." The word "imitate" appears to indicate the students should copy the passage in some way. Ancient records say that some people believed this passage had a magical quality to it that could calm young people. [In Photos: Two Black Magic Curse Tablets]